Dozens injured by train crash in southern Spain still in hospital

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00:00The latest is basically that that death toll is still 39 people at least.

00:06And we heard alongside Pedro Sánchez, the Prime Minister,

00:09we heard the President of Andalusia, Juan Moreno.

00:15He promised that there would be an investigation.

00:19And he also said that his thoughts were those families

00:23and that there were 48 people still in hospital.

00:27We know that one of them is a nine-year-old child, Angela,

00:31fighting for their lives, in many cases those hospitalised people.

00:37And really the victims are the first priority at the moment,

00:42both in Córdoba and here in Atocha, where that train was due to arrive.

00:48Many family members have come to a centre set up here today

00:52and they are basically being given advice on things like providing their DNA

00:58to the police here in either Madrid or in Córdoba.

01:02That will be absolutely crucial as the police and the forensic scientists

01:08go through that wreckage, which is tremendous,

01:11lying on the tracks there just outside that village in Córdoba,

01:16trying to pick through and to find any more bodies that may be there

01:23and to match up the missing people with those corpses.

01:27The Prime Minister has said that there will be three days of national mourning.

01:32All of the politicians have agreed with him on that

01:36and suspended their agenda.

01:39And so, basically, that's where we're at, Angela.

01:43A very, very sombre moment for people.

01:47And there are still buses.

01:48There are some trains.

01:49You'll see some passengers arriving behind me here at Atocha station.

01:54Some of those are the long-distance trains that are still running with Andalusia.

01:59But all the high-speed trains to that region have been suspended

02:04because of the need to find out exactly what has happened on the tracks.

02:08This was, you know, a very surprising accident.

02:12It was on that straight stretch of railway.

02:15Do we know any more about what might have caused it yet?

02:20We don't.

02:21We have had some speculation from some of the experts

02:24saying that perhaps it could have been something on the track,

02:28some kind of obstacle or a problem with the track

02:31because Renfi that operated one of the trains

02:37and is the state operator,

02:39they have said that it is surprising.

02:42The hypothesis of excess speed has already been ruled out.

02:47Both of the trains were travelling at just over 200 kilometres

02:51on a stretch where you can travel at 250 kilometres.

02:55And so lots of human error seems to be being ruled out at this stage.

03:03The investigation will take several days

03:05just because of the state of that second train

03:09that was basically pushed over down a four-metre embankment.

03:15And basically those wagons,

03:17the two wagons that fell down that embankment,

03:20contained 53 passengers.

03:22And so that bore the brunt of this accident.

03:26One of the focuses will be in a 20-second period,

03:30which is basically the first high-speed train came off its tracks

03:35and the other train was coming on an adjacent track.

03:40Now, there are warning systems that could break a train

03:43in those circumstances.

03:45However, under 20 seconds would mean that that would not happen.

03:50And so there will be a focus on what happened in those 20 seconds

03:53to see if that can drill down where the problem lie

03:57on the tracks or in the trains.

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